Many service providers, such as telecommunication service providers in general, and mobile telecommunication service providers in particular, gather diverse statistical information about individual customers in order to predict the behavior, needs, requirements, or the like in order to increase the customer's business volume, promote customer loyalty, predict future churns, acquire new customers, take marketing actions, or any other business activity or application.
Currently, mobile telecommunication companies are capable of extracting invaluable social information about large fractions of the population by analyzing which numbers individuals are calling, and optionally the identity of the other person, calling time, date and duration, or other parameters.
In the near future this ability is likely to be severely damaged as the information of the called numbers may not be available. Among the reasons for that are the usage of voice over IP applications such as Skype®, intensive usage of mobile virtual network operators (MVNO), or the like. Such technologies may utilize the mobile infrastructure and the internet as a platform for transferring calls as well as more sophisticated services. However, the mobile carrier may not be exposed to the actual number a person using the service is calling. This lack of information may significantly weaken the mobile carrier's ability to analyze the social activity and behavior of its customers.